Foundation work, April - June 2008
Our house really began to feel like a reality when the foundation pad was leveled out by our friend Sam. Choosing the exact spot of the house was not easy---there were pros and cons to placing it higher or lower on the south-facing slope, trees to save, views to consider. We finalized our decision about the location of the house just an hour or two before Sam showed up with the big Komatsu machine.
After the pad was leveled, our concrete guy came in and did the footers and the stem wall. Then the plumber established the bathrooms and kitchen and dug a long trench to hook us into our water supply (a community well). The solar guy came and we laid pipes in the floor for our radiant heat; finally, after inspections were completed, the slab was poured.
Aaron and I agonized over the color of the slab, since it was to be our finished floor. We originally wanted a deep red, but found ourselves wavering the morning of the pour. We changed our minds and went with a deep muddy brown. After all, the house is made of dirt.
We set a tight schedule for the foundation work because we really, really wanted to be ready to hold our "barn-raising party" on a certain weekend in June. It was nail-bitingly close to not being done in time, but the slab was poured at 5:00 p.m. the day before our party. (We did not start laying bricks on the slab the next day. We only laid bricks on the stem walls, which had been poured weeks earlier.) What mostly held us up was the inspections---the inspectors are supposed to come to your site within 48 hours, but we found it took more like 3+ days, unless bribes (such as a 12-pack of beer) were offered.
Before any of the work began, Aaron and I went to the county dump and got some free mulch. We laid down the mulch in the high-traffic areas that we hope to reclaim later. Here's Aaron on top of a mountain of mulch at the dump, shoveling it into the trailer.
Sunday, April 27
Once we chose our home site, unfortunately, some minor logging had to be done. We tried to save as many pinon trees as we could. Aaron had no problem cutting down junipers (they give him allergies) but he couldn't bear to cut down the few small pinons in the footprint of our house, leaving them for the big leveling machine to take care of.
Scott helped us define the boundaries of our foundation and set a datum for the depth of the foundation cut.
Sam and his large machine.
The first cut---a momentous occasion!
Eva checks out the pad.
Sam surveying his work.
May 16-25
The stem wall forms.
Aaron, with the concrete truck in the background (and snow-covered mountains!).
The finished stem wall (not the right height, as we later found out...and not very level, either).
May 31
The plumbing is in. For the first time, the rooms within our house began to take shape. Our plumber did mostly a very good job, and we were pretty happy with him, except that he accidentally put plumbing inside adobe walls. But he moved some of it and we were able to work around the plumbing that remained inside the adobe walls. (We had purposely designed our two bathrooms to be stacked on top of each other so that all the plumbing could travel in one, framed "wet wall.")
June 4
Getting close to our intended June 6th slab day, our solar guy, Rob of Solarwise, came out and together we laid the pipes in the floor for our radiant heat.
The Wirsbo, which is the name for this particular type of tubing, got all tangled up as it was laid. Here's Aaron trying to untangle it.
The finished plumbing and Wirsbo.
June 6
Late in the day on Friday (the day before our wall-building party), the concrete trucks and our concrete guy showed up and the pour began.
We chose a muddy brown color.
Sunset light on the slab. This is the mechanical closet in the garage.
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©2008 Amy Jordan; Email Me.